There's roughly three levels of "superpower" as I see it 1) You can do what you want in your region and mostly tell the rest of the world to shove it (e.g. Mon

There's roughly three levels of "superpower" as I see it 1) You can do what you want in your region and mostly tell the rest of the world to shove it (e.g. Monroe doctrine, annexation of Crimea, etc.) 2) You can do what you want worldwide but can't do it without consent of the local superpowers (e.g. The British getting tacit US permission to whack Argentina in the 80s) 3) You can do whatever the heck you want, where you want and it's up to everyone else to deal. (e.g. the USSR starting the Cuban missile crisis, the US invading Iraq). China is a 1 right now but all the pieces are there for them to jump to a 2 or 3 quickly. They aren't lacking manpower, money, internal political cohesion or tech. They just need to practice and get good and they could be a 2 or 3. Obviously this has a lot of people in the west worried because we haven't had to deal an authoritarian regime that was a superpower on the world stage since the USSR fell apart.